Word: trivialized
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Anyone who wanted to buy the toy company Selchow & Righter in 1984 would have paid an outsize price, like $200 million or so. At that time the company was hotter than hot, thanks to the board game it manufactures, Trivial Pursuit. But last week, when the company finally agreed to be sold, it went for a much smaller price: $75 million. The firm's acquirer: Coleco, the company that manufactures another smash hit, Cabbage Patch dolls...
Selchow's value has fallen because Trivial Pursuit proved to be a fad. The manufacturer's annual sales of the game plunged from $400 million two years ago to roughly $50 million now, estimates Paul Valentine, a toy-industry analyst. In contrast, Coleco's Cabbage Patch annual sales rose 11% last year, to $600 million...
...utterly stupid are the gags? The Cascara national anthem is accompanied by swimstrokes since most of the inhabitants are descended from shipwreck victims. Jimmy Walker (trivial persuit: remember J.J. of "Dyno-mite" fame?) does weather report on a tropical island. "It's hot!" he cries. The lead revolutionary sings all his lines to a reggae beat. Valerie Perrine reaches in Michael Caine's pocket for his lighter and instead grabs...Well, you get the idea...
newfound emphasis on picture stories, some of them trivial. Moyers has not volunteered a commentary for four months...
...would seem unlikely that trivial questions such as these--at least they seem trivial within the realm of modern life--would be enough to sustain the film. But somehow, they do. Director James Ivory is so successful at creating the atmosphere of upper-class Victorian England that the viewer never challenges the mores of Edwardian society. A kiss, so commonplace today, is presented as the logical grounds upon which one should decide on one's life mate...